DECEMBER 11, 2024:

 

I woke up around 11AM, safely tucked into the mattress I shared with my wife. Staring at the ceiling, I felt that it was still unrecognizable, despite the many months since we had moved in. Still, the mold stains were quickly becoming a sore reminder of where I was sleeping now. With a slight moan from weakness I managed to sit myself up, much to Rach’s relief.

 

“Omigawd, hon, I thought you were sick or something!” the messy-haired blonde squeaked at lightspeed.

 

My entire body felt an uncanny mix of light and achy, “No, no, I’m fine...just…wow. That was intense.”      

 

“Well, I’m glad one of us got off,” Rach half-giggled, half-sassed.

 

“Oh shoot, you didn’t?”

 

My wife pouted.

 

“Damn, Rach, I’m sorry, do you need me to…y’know?”

 

“No, I’m fine. Maybe just join me for a shower?” she asked, tapping her feelings of disappointment on the floor idly.

 

“Shoot, you haven’t taken one yet?”

 

“‘Thought I’d wait for you, Jen,” Rach seemed more sullen than usual, which concerned me.

 

“Hey, are you okay, Rachy-Rach?” I sing-songed, hoping to get her to crack a smile.

 

Staring at the ground, Rachel replied quietly, “No, no, yeah, I am. I’m just a bit tired, is all. Like, I dunno.”

 

I picked myself out of bed, wrapped my mostly naked self in a comforter and shuffled to my wife’s side. Bending down, I took her hand in mine and locked our fingers. “Tell me what’s bothering you, babe. Please, I’m your—we’re married, you can tell me. In sickness and health, right?”

 

Rachel’s expression took a slight pout, “I mean—uh…Jenni, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound selfish or anything, but… I think…”

 

“Go ahead, Rach. Please.” I strengthened my hold on her hand,feeling our palms press together even harder than before.

 

With some struggle, Rach lifted her eyes up a little and managed to look just beneath my eyelids, “It’s just…I was hoping our first time would be a little more magical, I guess?”

 

Oh.

 

“And, like, I’m glad we finally did it, y’know? But it was over so fast and I don’t feel like we really—I mean, like, communicated? Err, well, no, I mean that I feel like I’d only just gotten started, y’know? And like, I just wanted to feel you more-more, right? Err…how do I put this, y’know, like, ‘feel’ how you feel? ‘Know’ how you feel? Words are hard.”

 

I couldn’t help but smile softly. This woman, who’d always been so BIG of a force of nature in my life and in my eyes, was now showing me a new side of her that I couldn’t help but be more amazed by. Beyond the quirky sayings and the wildly vibrant fashion style, Rach had so many feelings within her. I just had to see them all, someday.

 

Lifting her chin up, I leaned in and kissed Rachel on the lips, making sure not to make direct eye contact. Parting, with Rach snapped from her thoughts, I smiled and spilled my guts: “Rachel, that was the best orgasm of my life. You literally had me convinced of things I’d never even considered doing before. It was amazing, thank you.”

 

Rachel’s lips threatened to turn into a sheepish grin, “Was it, like, really that good?”

 

“You’re the one who had to pick me off the floor, girl, what do you think?” I laid the wide smile on thicker, “You’d’ve probably had me, like, start to lose brain cells or somethin’ if we’d actually done anal.”

 

After a beat, Rachel and I broke into a fit of giggles together.

 

Cupping my cheek in my right palm, Rachel drew me back in for another kiss. The taste of my wife’s unstained lips was distinctly her, somehow still tasting of bubblegum and strawberries. “Thank you, Jenni. For everything you’ve done for me,” she whispered between kisses. 

 

With my mind threatening to blank itself with each passing second I took a quick breath between kisses to reply: “No, thank you Rach, for—”

 

Rachel pushed me back onto the now disheveled air mattress and began to plant kisses on my tummy.

 

“Rachel, Rachel—omigawd, that tickles!” 

 

“Good,” she giggled back between kisses, “Lemme hear those cute giggles some more!”

 

Rachel always knew how to make all the bullshit seem worth it. I wasn’t sure how she stayed so mentally strong, but the more I felt the result of her strength, the more I craved to be just as strong as her.

 

After all, the saying went “in sickness and health.”

 

***

 

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023:

 

Adrenaline coursed through my veins as I walked up-and-down the aisles of a certain big box grocery store, backpack slung over one shoulder, hoodie hood up. I hadn’t done this sort of thing before—I hadn’t needed to. As much as I hated how my parents had increasingly become more devoted to their careers, they had at least kept food on the table with ease. Now, here I was, about to shoplift some shit so my wife and I could eat while we hid on the streets from the police, miles away from our home. 

 

I stifled a cough—the fifth of the morning—and silently prayed that neither Rach nor I had gotten colds from two days living on the streets. Hell, now that I thought about it, it probably wouldn’t hurt to steal some medicine, too. Just lovely, Jae, stealing $20 bottles of DayQuil? Talk about moving up in the world, kid.

 

Taking four packages of apple slice snack trays off the wet wall, I slid Rachel’s backpack off of my shoulder and stuffed them into the bag. Walking as quickly—and as naturally—as possible, I grabbed two containers of some sort of meat product off of the deli wall and assigned them to their new temporary housing.

 

The speed-walk to the otherside of the story for the pharmaceuticals was positively dreadful. Nevertheless, I grabbed what I needed—even throwing some Vitamin C gummies in for good measure—and then made my way toward the exit, praying to whatever god that might have existed that I made it out unnoticed.

 

Passing through the sliding glass doors labeled ‘exit’, I was immediately cornered from both the front and back by plain-clothes asset protection. 

 

“Son, can you come with us?” the man to my fore asked, hands by his side but actively ready to grab me if I made any first contact with his body. He was about two inches taller than me and thirty years older. His graying hair, dreadfully receded, reminded me a little too much of my father. Or worse, me at that age.

 

Aww, shit.

 

“Uh…excuse me? Can you please move? I need to head to school.” It was an awful bluff—Rachel had always been the better liar between the two of us.

 

“Sir, please come with us,” the man behind me, a younger man no more than five years my senior and maybe 5’6’’, positioned himself to my south east and slowly crept forward to try and encourage me to inch leftward into whatever broom closet of a door was immediately outside of the glass sliding doors that led into the vestibules. 

 

Gripping onto the backpack on my back—and trying to hold in my bladder—I pressed forward, “Sorry, gotta run!” and made a dash to my right and straight past the middle-aged AP guy. A sudden tug pulled me backward and nearly off my feet. 

 

“Let go of the bag, son!” the middle-aged man said, more sternly this time.   

 

I knew that this wasn’t going to end well if I tried to play nicely—and I couldn’t have Rachel upset over her new pink backpack getting torn, either. Taking a risk, I let go of the bag just as the big bastard pulled with all of his body weight backward. Now flat on his ass atop his cohort, I stomped down on the hand holding the backpack, elicited a scream of “FUCK!” and then grabbed the bag and made an immediate dash through the entrance to the vestibules into the parking lot. 

 

By the time my brain caught up with the rest of me I was already at the back of the parking lot and running across the mostly empty morning road to put more distance between me and the store. “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!” I internally screamed, making extra sure not to trip as I stepped up onto the sidewalk and ran back to where I’d left Rachel. 

 

Ten minutes of full-speed sprinting later, I arrived back at the alley behind some older buildings where I’d left Rachel earlier that morning. Breath visible to the naked eye, I shot my panicked eyes around for Rachel, but didn’t find her. “Fuck! Rachel?!”

 

Rachel poked her head out from the corner on the far corner of the building to my left, “Jae?” she coughed, arms held across her torso to keep herself warm, despite wearing her “I LOVE DILFS” hoody, “That you?”

 

I dashed down the alley and collided into my girlfriend for a hug, sending us both down to the hard concrete, “Fuck! Babe, holy fucking SHIT!”

 

I wept in her arms for five minutes.

 

***

 

DECEMBER 11, 2024:

 

Struggling to stand beneath the lukewarm shower water—through the shakiness of my still-recovering post-orgasm legs—was made worth it by the way Rachel scrubbed my back from behind with her soapy exfoliating brush. The sensation of a good scrub was honestly underrated, in my opinion. 

 

“Fronty-fronts!”

 

Rachel leaned forward to reach around and scrub my breasts. The sensation made me flinch at first—not only because they were still growing—but also because I still wasn’t used to having breasts for someone else to touch yet. Leaning forward also pressed Rachel’s DD-cup breasts—fuck, Progesterone was the real shit, apparently—into my newly sensitive backside, causing some discomfort, but I bit my tongue. Heaven forbid I interrupt my chipper wife from her smash hit shower-singing performance of whatever anime the song she was singing was from. What a weeb.

 

But she was my weeb. Weeb Wife? Weeby Wifey? Whatever.

 

Rachel continued her sensual scrubbing, making her way down my tummy and then down…there. As Rachel’s hands approached my penis my chest tightened and a lump formed in my throat. Finally, on the cusp of moving past my navel, I took Rachel’s hands in my own and guided them down my thighs, away from my penis. As Rachel began to crouch in the tub I looked down to find her anticipating my look and returning it in a rare instance of eye-contact: “I love you,” she mouthed, apparently having never planned to touch my penis. 

 

I didn’t expect to release such a loud exhale, but the echo of the tub likely made it carry more. As my legs began to shake from the sensation of being touched I grabbed onto the wet tub wall for some support. Finally, Rach finished her scrubbing at my ankles before standing back up and turning me around in the cramped tub to face her.

 

“Did it feel good?” she asked with a whisper, wrapping her hands around my neck. 

 

Leaning inward, I wrapped my arms around Rachel’s body and rested my head on her shoulder. Holding me in place, Rachel patted my back, and whispered into my ear: “It’ll be alright.”

 

The lukewarm water continued to pour down on us as I contemplated just when I would get used to having my penis touched in any sort of way. I’d honestly never been a fan of acknowledging it before, but I’d played along with what was expected of a horny teenage boy…until now I simply didn’t have to. Putting aside the fact that I was nineteen now, putting aside the fact that I had a wife, and putting aside the fact that we were both now independent—if massively struggling—there was the question of just what the hell was going on with my sexuality.

 

When Rachel and I had first started dating I’d told her that I’d wanted her to…do…that to me…

 

…even though I was a cishet guy.

 

But…was I het? I mean, I wanted her cock in my ass. Sure, she’s a girl, so it’s technically straight, but whenever I’d thought about Rachel in those months before she came out to herself, as she was growing increasingly cuter and happier in ways I’d not seen her since before our teens, I…had feelings I’d never considered before.

 

I’d toyed with accepting ideas about myself that I’d always told myself weren’t real.

 

But then, it turned out that she was a girl! Nope! Still straight, clearly!!

 

Of course, there was also Danny-or-Daniel, that cute twink from the Gayly Bug Café. The way he looked at me, the way he spoke to me, the way he paid attention when I told a lame joke mid-order pickup.

 

It was electrifying. Not, like, marry and spend the rest of my life with him kind of electrifying. But, like, ‘hit up a club together for fun’ electrifying. ‘Kick his ass in Mario Kart’ kind of electrifying. ‘Rest my head on his shoulder because we’d been up too late watching movies on the couch’ kind of electrifying. ‘Kiss him on his lips after a day of walking the streets of Seattle and checking out architecture’ kind of electrifying. Fuck, how would it feel to feel his lip ring between our lips? Would it be cold or does his body heat keep it warm?

 

Why the hell was I thinking about all that? I had Rachel—my wife, the love of my fuckin’ life!

 

My grip on Rachel tightened out of sheer panic. Try as I might I couldn’t stifle a whimper, my humidified sinuses growing no less loose now that I was actively fighting back tears.

 

“I’ll never betray you, Rach.”

 

“I know, baby. I know.”

 

She was just so goddamned strong.

 

***

 

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023:

 

I had told Rachel that, “No, my cough isn't all that bad, babe. I’m just trying to get some excess mucus out!” for about three days now, but that was becoming increasingly hard to lie to her about. If I had had anything in my stomach to vomit I imagine I would have vomited it out after that last coughing fit.

 

Living on the streets of Seattle was not fun—I would not recommend it, in fact. Between a fear of strangers assaulting us, animals crawling all over us, the pigs harassing us or our shit getting stolen, I found myself remaining hyper-vigilant at all times.

 

Rachel had a non-verbal day the previous day, which scared me, but she’d finally spoken again this morning, telling me she never understood why she had a habit of just…not speaking. I remembered one time in fourth grade, she didn’t speak for a week. I thought she was just doing a bit, but looking back in hindsight I could tell that she wasn’t quite like the other kids in class. Those days came more and more during middle school and high school, thinking back on it.

 

As we packed up what gear we had to find someplace considerably less likely to get us arrested for loitering or looking suspicious, I noticed that I felt warmer than I should be. Coming by food was difficult and I was trying to save what cash Rachel and I had left on hand after buying a tent and sleeping bags. 

 

If I’d been smart I would have just snuck into my dad’s Seattle store and stolen the camping gear, but unfortunately my desire to protect my father from legal implications had bitten me in the ass. Speaking of which, I wondered now if that national investment deal had gone through or not. Probably not. It’s kind of hard to secure national investors when your kid was nationally wanted for murdering his mother and wife’s moms.

 

God, we were fucked.

 

“Hey Jae, are you okay? You’re looking a little…hot?” Rach asked as she hoisted her backpack over her shoulder. She’d stuffed her woefully unwashed hair under a beanie. How? I don’t know.

 

“Oh, do I? I don’t think a makeout sesh is wise in this alley, babe,” I sassed, doing my best to play her concerns off. “But if you want, I’m sure we can have a little fun before we lea—”

 

Rachel’s unusually serious face caught me off guard, “Jae, is it your stitches? Do you think you have an infection?”

 

My false swagger slowly faded into the background, “I, uh, was supposed to take a T-shot on Wednesday. It’s fine, really, I’ll live.”

 

“Jae,” Rachel said, stepping towards me and taking my right hand, “You’ll get sick without hormones in your body. Jesus, is this why, like, you’re sweating so much? You might have an infection, too!”

 

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing and stared at the ground.

 

“Can we sneak—”

 

“Too dangerous. The cops likely have the place being watched, even if my dad has come home.”

 

“How about the hospital?”

 

“Too dangerous. Besides, buying prescription testosterone without insurance would be insanely expensive and we barely have any cash as it is now,” I buried my face in my palms to shoot some incomprehensible words.

 

“Honey, listen, just…turn yourself in and say it was all on me! There’s no reason that you have to suffer through this!”

 

Withdrawing my face from my palms I grimaced at my wife, “Whoever the fuck is setting us up was smart enough to blame us both for what happened. There’s no way in hell I’m getting off scot-free here. We’re in this together, babe.” I slumped against a garbage dumpster and took a deep breath to try and collect myself, “Rachel, does that website sell testosterone, too?”

 

Rach’s look grew even graver. After taking a moment, she finally replied, “I’m sorry, hon. T’s a controlled thingy, you need, like, a prescription.”

 

A solemn mood fell over the scene. Rach and I laid down to rest, huddled together against the smelly dumpster to review our options. 

 

Rachel pulled out the packet of Estradiol she kept in her purse for her morning dose and slipped it under her tongue. 

 

A thought occurred to me, but I wasn’t sure if it was insane or not. I mean, surely she’d never agree to it, either? It was insane to even think about, right?

 

But at the same time…I needed to get hormones in me somehow and change how I looked to avoid being picked up by the cops. It was insane—completely and utterly insane.

 

“Hey Rach…can I try one of those?”

 

***

 

DECEMBER 11, 2024:

 

Rach and I finished our shower and then immediately proceeded to work on our skincare routine. Having to have my wife teach me how to take care of my skin—”If you wanna look cute like me you’ve gotta do this, and this, and this!” ad nauseum—was disorienting at first. Being forced to undergo a medical and social transition to avoid The Man, had meant that I had to strip away a lot of the baggage that cishet men tended to have about what is-or-isn’t masculine or appropriate for men to do.

 

Shit, who was I to have ever bought into that bullshit, anyway? Putting aside the fact that I needed to do this for the safety of me and my wife, I’d suffered a lot more indignities across the dozen years that I had known Rachel and still managed to find myself with a wife I wouldn’t sacrifice for anything. 

 

Besides, cis guy or not, I looked way cuter now. Even cuter than Rach was the summer before last. Even in baggy graphic tees she still looked amazing. Even as a silly, lovable, dense egg who wore a Sword Art Online girl’s cosplay while we hung out on her birthday the week before senior year.

 

Christ, she was a dense egg. The top of the densest eggs, really.

 

Rach finished her routine before me, as was becoming the norm lately. I had been getting into the habit of staring at my reflection in the mirror for extended periods of time lately to better scrutinize if I passed or not. Thanks to our jobs paying what they did we were able to at least afford electrolysis now and I was increasingly taken with how great my skin looked. 

 

Not having to fucking shave all the time was nice, too.

 

Besides, it was less of a pain if only one set of hands at a time were flailing around in our tiny bathroom. Once sufficiently pleased that I had stared at my reflection just enough to temporarily assuage my anxieties, I joined Rach in our bedroom to dress for work. 

 

***

 

MARCH 16, 2024

 

Seven months on HRT and not a whole lot to eat had led to me dropping a significant amount of weight. Combined with the lack of testosterone in my body and a significant weight drop, my body was not acclimating well to the weather. It didn’t matter to my slender frame how close spring was. I’d spent much of the last half year coughing up a lung, all while trying to perfect my new voice.

 

Shuffling through the double doors of a convenience store in our No Steal Zone’s, the clerk gave me a lingering stare. 

 

That was beginning to happen a lot more lately, unfortunately. I wasn’t sure if it was the longer hair—just a little past my shoulders now—or the way my widening hips had changed how I walked. Well, that and the way I’d started practicing to walk and gesture more feminine. I had spent a lifetime watching how Rachel walked or used her hands in conversation, so it wasn’t exactly difficult to mimic.

 

Well, not when you practiced as much as I did, I guess.

 

Face masks had also helped with hiding any beard shadow, but combined with everything else they were also beginning to help make me look even more like a tomboy wearing her boyfriend’s hoodie to pick up something at the convenience store. Even though the hoodie was to cover my developing breasts I was starting to read to men either as a woman or a tranny—their words, not mine—and that always made for a wild game of Russian Roulette. Getting sexually harassed because some asshole saw me as a cute tomboy or getting sexually harassed and even physically assaulted because I looked like a tranny? Not fun. 

 

Without that old muscle mass my body’s days of winning a fist fight were probably over now, too.

 

I grabbed the sweaty, crumpled $5 I kept in my back pocket and one of the plastic jewels embroidered onto the back pants pocket fell off at the motion of my hand sliding into the pocket. It was the fourth piece of the embroidered flower to fall off in the past half year and when Rachel noticed she would inevitably pout. 

 

Money locked-and-load in my clenched fist, I slid through the aisles to the cold wall and grabbed a water bottle to replace the one I’d tossed earlier that day. It smelled like rat piss and we had both agreed that we did not care for that one bit. 

 

Rachel wouldn’t tell me where she got the five. She was doing that a lot these days.

 

Reaching the counter before the only other customer in the store I presented the clerk with the water bottle, waited for it to be scanned, and then handed over the five. The cost of water bottles in Seattle was a fucking crime against humanity, but Rach and I needed a new one and didn’t have the time or cash to spare to travel to Redmond, which had quickly become our biggest zone for shoplifting and then returning items for cash. 

 

With two of us now taking HRT, Rachel’s stash was beginning to run dry. Neither one of us wanted to do without hormones—or specifically, the right hormones in Rachel’s case—in our bodies. Earning cash while on the run wasn’t exactly easy, either. I’d been wracking my brain, trying to think up a way for us to have a way to receive packages. I refused to let Rach go without her HRT for even a day. 

 

The man behind me—dressed ‘nice for a schmuck’ nice—whistled, “Damn girl, nice ass!”

 

The little hairs on the back of my neck rose, as they’d been well-trained to do now. I ignored the man, took my change and water bottle, and made a beeline for the exit. Moments after my exit the same schmuck followed after me, calling for my attention. I checked the streets immediately, trying to think up the best way to ditch the loser before making my way to East Madison Street to meet up with Rach. 

 

“Come on, sweetcheeks,” I nearly vomited in my mouth, but managed to safely rush across traffic to reach the other side of the street and then down an alleyway to escape.

 

Once reasonably removed from the threat of immediate dangers, I let myself sob.